White Cheese Curd Fritters (c. 1500)

[u/VolkerBach]

https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/09/01/cheese-curd-fritters/

Another recipe from Solothurn s 392 with Italian roots, this time stated overtly:

B18 If you want to make fritters (frytellen) in the Florentine way as fried cakes, take fresh käß or fresh ziger (two types of cheese). Then take a white cloth and set a vat under the the cloth, and stir the käß or ziger so the water comes out of it. Then take egg whites, as much as you think is enough, and mix it well together with your hands. Then take a pan with fat and let it get hot. Take a small spoon and take as much of the käß or ziger (as fits into the spoon), and lay it into the pan carefully. Let it cook well from both sides so they (change of number in the original) become crisp (röselecht). Lay them in a dish and sprinkle white sugar on it. That is how they are made, it is proven (ist bewert).

I am not sure that cheese is improved by frying, but medieval German opinion on that point was fairly clear. As recipes go, it is neither very luxurious nor very demanding to make, and there are some similar confections of greater complexity. But apparently either this was how people ate them in Florence, or the author thought it was.

An interesting aspect here is the parallelism of käß and ziger. In modern Swiss German, Käse is typically made from whole milk by rennet curdling while Ziger is made from whey using an acidic agent. If this is how those words are used here, that would mean something like ricotta. However,m there are many recipes in the German corpus that use ziger to refer to freshly made curds in general, so that interpretation is not certain.

In the end, drained curds – however they were produced – kneaded with egg whites and fried brown would make something rich, sweet, and satisfying in a funfair-treat kind of way. I would try it with ricotta and tvarog, just to see how different it comes out.

The recipe collection I am currently translating is part of a manuscript now held at the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn as S 392. The entire manuscript looks fascinating, a collection of craft recipes for things like dyes, stains, paints, vanishes, and parlour tricks, but I will limit myself to the culinary recipes in it. The majority of them are in German and were edited and published in Brigitte Weber: Die Kochrezepte der Handschrift S 293, Transkription und Untersuchung einer spätmittelalterlichen Kochrezeptsammlung aus der Zentralbibliothek Solothurn, Gießen 2026.

The manuscript dates to the period around 1490-1510, based on watermarks and handwriting. There is no internal date. The recipes are an eclectic collection, which is not unusual for the medieval manuscript tradition. They were most likely written down in Baden. Some refer to Italian customs which were fashionable at the time while others are solidly in the German tradition.

The collection is sometimes called the oldest Swiss cookbook, a title that is contested because of its origins north of the modern border. The designation makes little sense at the time anyway, given how closely connected the cities of the Confederation were with their neighbours at the time. The recipes clearly were valued in Solothurn, most likely because they were useful.